If you're like the more than nine percent of Americans currently unemployed, your "Yes We Can!" has lately lost some of its gusto. You've hit up everyone you know for work, including your mom, your ex, and your ex's ex. Let's face it: jobs are about as easy to find these days your hedge-fund manager's home phone number. Meanwhile, you're broker than Iceland and you're in need of a serious cash infusion.

Fortunately, a little bit of hustle and a can-do attitude are the ingredients necessary for a moneymaking rain dance. We've put together a few pointers for thriving in post-meltdown America that you probably won't find posted on the wall at the unemployment office. And remember, if these fail you, there's always prostitution and food service (two jobs that require the same skills — just in different uniforms). Get out your umbrellas!

Feed your (continuing) edDo you have a little time and dough to invest in a career upgrade? Here are three degrees you can get quickly that will give you an excellent shot at skipping the bread line.

EMT CERTIFICATION It's hard work, and not for the faint of heart, but a basic EMT license will get you onto the bottom rung of the health-care ladder — a field that still has a clear path for advancement, and that's growing at a tremendous clip despite (or perhaps because of) our nation's woes. Northeastern University offers basic EMT classes running from June 30 to September 19 for $1323.

GREEN JOBS The recent stimulus bill included $500 million for green-job training nationwide. The Department of Labor hasn't started doling out the money yet — they're still looking at grant applications — but once they do, watch for green-job-certification programs to crop up across the country. Words of wisdom: be wary of frauds and hucksters.

BEAUTY SCHOOL No clever bastard has yet found a way to outsource a pedicure to Bangladesh. You can complete a part-time degree in cosmetology in six months to a year: try the Elizabeth Grady School of Esthetics in Medford, or the Blaine School near Boston Common.

Bite the bulletinBefore you panic, first hit the job boards. Students: you have a particular advantage here, as university communities are a hotbed of temp jobs, and student-support centers are usually eager to help hook you up. BU, for instance, keeps an online "Quickie Job" bulletin board for registered students, while MIT allows students to sign onto an "on-call list" for babysitting, data entry, and other kinds of temporary work.

Even if you're not a student, you can still prowl university bulletin boards in meatspace. Or try well-trafficked coffeeshops, small grocery stores, and laundromats. If you peel away the apartment listings and expired band flyers (not to mention umpteen pleas for employment from other desperate schmoes like yourself), you should be able to find ads for part-time work with high turnover, such as collecting petition signatures or cleaning houses.

Kiss your grass goodbyeIn hard times, the right piece of equipment can make you an instant entrepreneur. (Consider Mad Max, who probably made bank renting out his Geiger counter.) Have a lawnmower? You're in business. Go around your neighborhood looking for shockingly unkempt yards, and start knocking on doors. (Do be prepared, however, to encounter equal amounts of dog shit and absentee landlords.)

Surviving the econopocalypse If you're like the more than nine percent of Americans currently unemployed, your "Yes We Can!" has lately lost some of its gusto. You've hit up everyone you know for work, including your mom, your ex, and your ex's ex.

Your Money We thought the bailouts were over. They're not. FairPoint Communications, the nightmare that has become northern New England's landline provider, is seeking tax dollars that could help it fulfill the promises made to regulators in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont when the company spent $2.3 billion to buy Verizon's systems here.

American jitters You would have to be delusional not to be anxious, perhaps even fearful.

Net neutrality has become the biggest free speech issue of the 21st century. Is it doomed to failure? One morning last month, Senator Al Franken stood at the podium of a hotel in downtown Austin, looking out at some of the most innovative minds in the country gathered at this year's South by Southwest Interactive conference. "I know that many of you have heard people talk about net neutrality before," he said, "but I want to take just a moment to explain it, because part of the strategy being used to destroy net neutrality is to confuse Americans about what the term even means."

Media activists aim to take over the future ... of news Now imagine you're in charge of getting people excited about media reform — promoting things like local ownership of press outlets, a free and open Internet, and vibrant public journalism that operates outside of party politics. Besides the considerable outreach, education, and advocacy work in store, you've got to deal with the fact that many people just don't like the media.

Urban Fest gets ugly It didn't take long for the largely suburban horde to erupt into a frenzy at the free outdoor concert, which was dubbed, somewhat ironically, the Boston Urban Music Fest (BUMF).

The Gardner gets crafty Art museums are designed to celebrate the end results of the creative process. But one of Boston's most highbrow institutions, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, has developed new programming to foster that process on-site.

Free for (f)all Here are highlights of things that won’t cost you a dime, for every week from now until Thanksgiving.

SURVIVE THE ECONOPOCALYPSE | June 11, 2009 If you're like the more than nine percent of Americans currently unemployed, your "Yes We Can!" has lately lost some of its gusto. You've hit up everyone you know for work, including your mom, your ex, and your ex's ex.

SURVIVING THE ECONOPOCALYPSE | June 11, 2009 If you're like the more than nine percent of Americans currently unemployed, your "Yes We Can!" has lately lost some of its gusto. You've hit up everyone you know for work, including your mom, your ex, and your ex's ex.

CAP AND TRADE EXPLAINED | May 06, 2009 The general idea behind cap and trade is pretty simple: put a tax on pollution, and the market will crank out less of it. But if a pollution tax is a lever, cap and trade is a vast, rickety Rube Goldberg contraption. Ingenious? Yes. Complicated? Fiendishly.

CONGRESS'S WAR ON TOYS | February 09, 2009 Incredible, but true: until this past Friday, America was on a fast track to outlaw grandmothers selling children's sweaters for charity.